FUN­TAZMO OMAN AV­ENUES MALL 450 BZ PER RIDE

It was on a quiet af­ter­noon when I was at the Oman Av­enues Mall shop­ping when I heard dis­tant screams com­ing from some­where within the mall. As I kept as­cend­ing the floors, the screams started get­ting louder. But for a change there was some­thing about those screams that didn’t creep me out, in­stead got me go­ing to­wards it. They weren’t ac­tu­ally the pet­ri­fied screeches but were more like sounds of thrill and ex­cite­ment. If you are in Oman, then you’ve def­i­nitely been to the Oman Av­enues Mall and if you have been in the mall then it is not very likely for you to have missed Fun­tazmo, the in­door amuse­ment park, which hap­pens to be the largest in the coun­try. A new ad­di­tion to this amuse­ment haven is the roller coaster that is sure to be the key at­trac­tion of the park. Lo­cated on the sec­ond floor, with a dou­ble height space, the roller coaster over­shad­ows the place by its enor­mity. The 274 me­tre long coaster trav­els at a speed of 9.5 m/s and can ac­com­mo­date 16 peo­ple at one time.

Be­ing a fan of speed and thrill, I got ex­cited when I saw this black beast zoom past me. I got into a cart after pur­chas­ing the ticket and held on to the rail­ing bar se­cur­ing me to the seat. It started off slow and smooth to gather speed by the sec­ond un­til sud­denly we hit the first in­ver­sion, fol­lowed by drop, fol­lowed by a climb to a steeper drop. There were mul­ti­ple twists and even a whole 180 de­gree turn, which is when I could not keep my mouth shut and screech found its way out of my mouth. I was a lit­tle em­bar­rassed as the kid sit­ting next to me was calmly en­joy­ing the ride with­out shed­ding a hint of fear at all. I was dis­heart­ened when the ride came to an end but the 60 sec­onds I spent on the ride did feel much longer and I did feel more alive and gushed even when I was off it.

The com­plete ac­tion can be viewed from two gal­leries across the cen­tre – one lo­cated on the same floor and the other on the third floor

a gam­ing card at the cus­tomer ser­vice desk lo­cated at the en­try to Fun­tazmo, which you can preload with how­ever much money you choose plus ad­di­tional free ex­tra load. Games and ride prices start from 450 baisas. —shruthi@time­so­fo­man.com